


Salvation is for Sinners

by girl_wonder



Category: Supernatural
Genre: POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-28
Updated: 2011-05-28
Packaged: 2017-10-19 20:43:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girl_wonder/pseuds/girl_wonder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pastor Jim is not simply a man with a collar and a Bible. He has a lot of guns, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salvation is for Sinners

Salvation is for Sinners

Jim was born James into a family of biblical J names. His brothers were John, Jude, Joseph, and Jacob, four rowdy boys, five when he came along. His mother was straight-backed, knit better than anyone in their county, and had been brought in from the city like a foreign import to their small farm in their small Minnesota town.

She died on a Tuesday, killed by a werewolf when he was fifteen.

They went into the forest as five brothers, came out as five warriors, with the head of the were-creature in a black plastic bag.

When he learned later that it was silver that would have killed the thing, he wasn't a bit sorry that they'd had to hold it down, hack at its head with the old wood-chopping axe. He was the youngest at fifteen, and his oldest brother was twenty-two when it happened. John had held him steady, a firm hand on his shoulder, and said, "Do it," to Joseph and Jacob, the twins.

It had been the most bloody thing that Jim would ever see, and that included an exorcism that ended in disembowelment.

*****

When John Winchester first came to him, Jim would have liked to pretend that it was fate brining his older brother back to him, after five years gone to the earth, the grave salted after the funeral.

But it wasn't fate, it was chance that brought John Winchester into his life. A few counties away, boys were dying and John had come to fix that. Later, Jim would learn that John had stashed his own boys at a motel, come to church out of desperation, didn't need God, needed quiet and forgiveness.

John needed Jim, in the way that he would always need people, silently, deeply, with want of understanding at its core, so unfulfilled that it was nearly rotten when Jim said, "Ah, so you hunt, then."

The first time that they'd met, Jim didn't even know that John had children, just that he needed quiet space, the atmosphere of God without the Word of him.

*****

John Winchester knew more Latin than Jim when they first met. Taking vows wasn't giving up hunting for Jim, it was finding a new way to fight evil. Evil in the hearts of men was just as hidden, just as pernicious, as it was outside of church walls.

He built sanctuary and, after John, began to come the rest, first Jim's own brothers, like lost sheep returning to the fold, then Caleb who was barely a boy, Mark with his scars and visions. Missouri came and they sat with tea, nearly ignoring each other until it was time for her to go.

Good people found sanctuary in his holy walls on holy ground and Jim found himself the safe house for an army.

*****

Jude left them as soon as he turned eighteen, and John screamed at him, yelled after his truck when it went down the driveway. The ghost of their mother lived in their house and no matter how many times they told their father that they'd taken care of it, their father kept a loaded shotgun near his bed.

Farm life was constant motion, the chill of snow in winter, so much cold it was nearly warm. Snow fell through tree branches, catching on his shoulders when he brought wood indoors, wetting his eyelashes like tears for an unknown sadness.

Jim used to take the horses out, trot them. He made breakfast and his brothers, broad shouldered and rough, would eat whatever he cooked before going out to work the land. It was four of them after Jude left: John, Joseph, Jacob, and Jim.

When the neighbors heard of trouble, everyone knew that the only people you could call to take of the things that were invisible to the law were the Murphy brothers, all tall and broad, except for the youngest son. After years of teasing, Jim had no illusions about his own looks.

Still, he was a Murphy brother, and that counted for more than enough.

When people of Minnesota needed help, they nearly didn't ask for it, so independent that someone could die of infection before he'd ask for a doctor. The help that they did ask for was surprising and given without question. Jim was never prouder than when he was known as a Murphy brother to someone they'd helped.

******

The habits of John Winchester were impossible to map, no advice given in the book of the Lord for how to deal with a stubborn man nearly choked with his need for revenge. The first time that John brought a gun into the church, Jim had shaken his head, made him put it out in the car.

"John," he said, exasperated. "This is a place of sanctuary. There can't be any sanctuary with that on your shoulder."

If John knew, those first few years, about the arsenal Jim had in his office he only ever said, "Well, I guess I'll have to rely on you to protect me, then, won't I, Father?"

"Pastor," Jim corrected.

*****

When Jim went to school, started the path that would lead him to his vows, John had smiled like proud father. He'd slapped Jim's shoulder hard, so that Jim had rocked forward, nearly tipped over.

"The land was always too hard on you," John said. He let the twins tease Jim, mock the church, but never the Lord.

They all still bowed their heads at the table to pray, left their mother's seat empty, always. He left his brothers in winter, went to find a new devotion the way that John would always look for a wife and the way that Jacob would always look for a horse.

*****

Jude came into the church on a Thursday when Jim was in the middle of straightening hymnals. For all the years of absence, the occasional letter from cities with skylines of skyscrapers, his brother had changed very little.

"I heard you got out, too," Jude said, happily. He'd slapped Jim's shoulder, but without the weight of approval that John's hand had.

"Out of what?" Jim asked, lightly innocent, because he knew the hatred his brother carried in his chest.

"The family. Their crazy, you know, 'hunting'," Jude smirked to the man behind him, a man he had introduced as his boyfriend. The muscled man looked more like John than Jim would have liked.

"Ah," Jim said. "No."

Disappointment flashed across Jude's face. But, he came back for Christmas service and Easter. In the sunlight, front pew across the aisle from John, Jacob, Joseph, and their father, Jude looked more alone than anyone else in the congregation.

*****

The Winchester boys would break Jim's heart, he knew that the first time that he met them, shy little Sam hiding in his brother's shadow, brass Dean who had seen more of the world at seven then most people saw at seventy.

John looked haggard, tired out. His hand was firm on Dean's shoulder and he said, "Can you take care of them for a few days?"

"Of course, John." Jim squatted down and held out his hand to Dean. "I'm Pastor Jim."

"Good." John touched his son's head, once, and said, "Be good for Pastor Jim, Dean."

It was an order that Jim was startled to hear from someone who spoke about his sons as though they'd made the moon out of Playdough and stuck it to the sky with a stroke of scotch-tape brilliance.

*****

At night, Jim always prayed, first for his mother, as he'd prayed since he found her ripped open in the horse's paddock. Then for his brother John, gone down a hero. Joseph, Jacob, and their father were always third. Jude was fourth out of something Jim would easily admit was obligation.

Then came his flock. Not the parishioners, but his flock of hunters and victims, the people that sat in the church and stared at candles until their eyes flowed painful, burning tears.

*****

Sam wanted to go to school, to learn. Jim taught him to read in pieces, in the times that John would leave the boys long enough that he could sit with tea for himself, cocoa for Sam, and point to words in children's books.

It was an illustrated bible, the first time, but it was all he had.

Later, he would get books more appropriate, with less implied, hidden violence. Less stories about fathers and sons the complicated love that grew between them. The Winchester boys had enough implied and real violence in their lives already.

When Sam was nine, they would sit with tea and cocoa and Pastor Jim would finally be able to open his mother's bible, the pages aged and the family tree fading on the inside cover.

"This is a book that will help you find all the answers, Sam," Jim said.

If John minded the indoctrination, he never said anything. As always, he took his sons and left, a few more bruises on his body, a few more shadows in his eyes.

*****

"Can I leave the car here?" John asked. It was late, and they were drinking whiskey, watching the boys sleep on cots that Jim had started keeping for his flock.

Home was something that he'd learned had to be made where it could be found.

"Not the truck," Jim said lightly. He slouched a little, looked over at John Winchester.

John took a drink. "The Impala. I can't keep both."

The Impala was well cared for, long lines and low to the ground. It had always been an impossible car; Jim knew from stories.

"Of course," Jim said.

In his sleep, Dean murmured, nearly groaned, and turned over. Soon he would need his own cot, be too big to share with his brother.

*****

Breathing out sharply, Jim didn't move backwards. Jim knew that Sam was only sharpening himself on him. He knew that the real person that Sam wanted to fight was John.

Still, it hurt.

"I don't understand how you can believe in this crap!" Sam was waving a Giddeon's bible. "You're a logical person, Jim. You know how the world works."

"I have faith in God," Jim said. "You haven't given me anything that I need to argue, Sam."

"Faith," Sam spat, then, almost logically, he said. "I don't believe in God."

"Well," Jim knew that if he let Sam win here, Sam would think he could challenge John and win at that, too. But no one could win against John, not against his stubbornness, his constant need to be right.

"Well," he said, again. "That's your prerogative."

Sam smiled as though it was a win, and looked a little like Jude fighting Jacob.

*****

Caleb came to Jim when he was fifteen, ran away from an abusive home. He screamed in his sleep and broke one of the cots trying to escape from an unseen enemy.

Of all of his flock, Caleb was the first who fought against what Jim had to say. The rest took his ministry with a strange sort of resignation, as though it was a medicine they hated to take, but would swallow out of a deep affection and trust.

But Caleb didn't leave, ever. He yelled and fought, but refused the offer of freedom just as fiercely.

Jim sent him to work on the farm during the summer. Joseph and Jacob had mellowed some in their old age, bachelors caring for the land and their senile father. They came the two hour drive to church with fraternal loyalty and when Jim saw Caleb, obviously wrestled into one of Jude's old Sunday suits, he knew that handing the troubled boy over was for the best.

After the summer, Caleb came back, more settled and ready to learn. He said, "Your brothers, they said that you know more about hunting than they do."

And Jim had finally been able to teach.

*****

When Dean saw Caleb for the first time, it had been like watching two dogs growl and circle each other. Because Dean was barely two years younger, but he had been first to the church: it had been his fine child-hair dyed red by stained glass when he'd slept on the pews before Jim had bought cots.

Now, it was Caleb who trained and helped as a handyman around the church. Dean melted, though, when he saw how Caleb filtered himself to his best self for Jim. It took only one, "yes, sir" for Dean to clap Caleb on the back and say, "Let me know you the Impala."

By the end of the visit, it was Caleb who was the new caretaker for the car, told to drive it every once in a while, "Because, Pastor Jim drives it like he's an old lady."

Jim had laughed, relieved.

*****

John said, one day, "If I thought I could, I'd leave the boys with you."

All Jim could do was nod, because if he knew anything it was love and how love made you do stupid, irreversible things.

******

end


End file.
